Rink Rats: Why Mark Messier Is Wrong for the Rangers

I have been waiting for one of the New York sportswriters to say something sensible about the notion of hiring Mark Messier to follow John Tortorella as the Rangers’ coach, and none has. Almost all of them seem to think it’s a practicable idea, with some reservations. The discussion has included the benefit to the team’s identity of hiring a hero player; the example of Messier’s inspiring character; his inexorable determination; his charisma; his outsized love of competition; and his past as the sport’s greatest leader, a designation bestowed on him by sportswriters and to at least some degree apocryphal. Messier was a ruthlessly efficient and successful player, but there have been a lot of great leaders in hockey, both firebrands and eggheads and types in between. Messier benefited from having performed a spectacular feat in Manhattan, with many eyes on him. In 1994, when the Rangers were down 3–2 and facing elimination against the Devils, he said that his team would win the sixth game, and they did, 4–2, with Messier scoring three goals. The whole episode was characteristic of him, but if he had done it in Edmonton, it wouldn’t resonate so much here, where the big mouthpieces are.

The consensus seems to be that if Messier is to be given the job, he will have to choose assistant coaches who know more than he does—strategy guys who can run the power play and the penalty kill and thwart opponents at even strength. It is conceded that blackboard stuff would not be Messier’s strong suit. Such skills are usually learned, over years, in the minor leagues, or by standing beside someone in the N.H.L. who has a much better idea what he is doing. A lot of craft is involved, in other words. Messier has never coached in the N.H.L. or the minor leagues. He has coached only twice and never for long, both times in 2010 in tournaments abroad, most recently in Switzerland, where his team finished second out of six.

So far as I can tell, nothing suggests that Rangers General Manager Glen Sather is interested in hiring Messier. Messier’s candidacy seems to be entirely self-recommended. He, or someone representing him, appears to have got the ear of the local press and to have hammered the notion that he would be a wizard coach, even though his record doesn’t contain any such indication. His tactical shortcomings can be addressed by brilliant, unassuming sidekicks, the writers suggest. The granite-like figure of his countenance, like a brand or a symbol, would frighten other coaches and their teams. This is magic thinking, of course, stuff for myths, comic books, and the sports pages.

If Sather were interested in Messier, something would have been said by now, I think. The deal might even have been struck. Some of the columnists and beat writers have written that Sather would advance his own reputation by hiring Messier. Anyone who follows the Rangers knows that Sather couldn’t care less what people think of him. He cares what James Dolan, the team’s owner, thinks, and I would guess anyone else can hit the road.

It is true that some writers have acknowledged that the record of past greats who have tried to coach without going to school in the minor leagues has not been good. Wayne Gretzky coached the Phoenix Coyotes for four years, and the main thing that the sport’s greatest player accomplished was to make himself look like a failure. The man who followed him, Dave Tippett, won using the same team. Gretzky and Messier, whose achievements I admire, are precisely the sort who often don’t do well as coaches. Players who thrive as coaches tend to have been the ones in the middle and lower portions of the roster, who sat for long periods on the bench, observing the moves and adjustments the coaches made in selecting this or that line or defense pair or player to oppose another team’s star. They absorbed the rhythms and flow of the game as it unfolded in front of them, saw how to manage leads and how to rally from behind. They saw what defensive plans muted specific attacks, what breakouts began them, and which to employ in a specific case, subverting personality to a task with a certain humility.

Messier and Gretzky, in contrast, played within their own rarified and superlative abilities. They tended to dominate their matches and were on the ice sometimes for nearly half of a game. They weren’t observing or studying; they were enacting then recovering in order to perform again. They were the narrative, not the theme. Furthermore, neither was subjected to much coaching. Sather coached them in Edmonton and once said that his plan was to call “Gretz, Mess,” putting one after the other on the ice and letting him do what he wanted. Subjected to some lockdown coaching by Roger Neilson in New York, Messier chafed and insisted that the game was better played by force of will than through cautious and diligent systems. This does not recommend him handsomely for contemporary N.H.L. hockey, in which behind most benches is a brainy guy with a portfolio of strategies. I can imagine other coaches and general managers only hoping Sather would hire Messier and thinking they will eat him alive with what they know that he does not.

Finally, and most important, nowhere have I read what Messier’s appointment would mean to Henrik Lundqvist, the Rangers’ star goalie, who wants desperately to win the Stanley Cup. Appointing Messier amounts to writing Lundqvist’s ticket out of town as a free agent next summer. Anyone who thinks that Lundqvist would favorably regard the handing of the team’s fortunes to an unproven coach is dreaming.